I'm still rewatching Star Trek the Next Generation, slowly, and Better Call Saul as well. Both are a treat, and they use pretty much opposite types of continuity. Or close to it -

Next Gen was made in the 80's and early 90's. At the time, the decree ...

Better Call Saul is the prequel series to Breaking Bad. Both shows are incredible, and probably my two favorite shows. The characters in these shows, especially Better Call Saul, have great nuance to them, and most of them have multiple “wants” or “needs” that are in opposition to each other ...

Characters want something - this is a basic building block of storytelling. Identifying what a main character wants is a big step in defining that character. Figure out how they go about trying to get it - that's the beginning of a story. Figure out what's stopping them from getting ...

I've started a few webcomics at this point, and all of them are ongoing…well, at least in theory.

There's always the question of where to start. What's page one gonna be?

With my first comic, Typical Strange, I LABORED over that decision for years.

Kind of ...

A tried and true story trope is the “forced together”.

I think it was the director Sidney Lumet who said that he really enjoyed the tension that came from
this kind of situation. Taking two people who would never choose to be together are stuck in
a bad situation. It ...

badum-tsss

I thought the first time I appreciated comedy that was “bad on purpose”, it was Fred Willard in Best in Show.
It's possible that some of his quips and comments were funny, or funny to some people…but the point of that character (a clueless commentator at a ...

One story structure, that ozoneocean and I talked about many years ago on the Quackcast, was the Lone Protagonist as drifter.

In Pulp Fiction, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) says talks about leaving the life of crime to walk the Earth. “Like Kane in Kung Fu. Help people, get in adventures ...

I was thinking about the idea of characters who have a dream of something - a wonderful life, a perfect situation, and are living for the possibility of getting there.

For me, the story that hits this hardest is Of Mice and Men, where George and Lenny, struggling during the Depression ...

I first heard the phrase “an itch to scratch” from the creators/writers of Better Call Saul. When they were expanding and deepening the “Saul” character from Breaking Bad, they needed to change a comedic side character into a fully rounded lead character. And Vince Giligan said that an early ...

Damaged Heroes


A well written, standard Protagonist will generally have some flaws, starting out as an underdog of some kind, with lessons to learn and improvements to make over the course of the story.

Granted, some heroes are, well, just heroes, who are pretty much who they need to be ...